Fascism, for reasons that should not be difficult to divine, has been very much on my mind of late. My bedside table has borne a stack of books about the growth, nature, and origins of fascism, mixed in with the novels, for the last six months or so, and understanding the similarities and differences between fascism and i ...

It is a false dichotomy to say that in this world there are cat people and there are dog people, and never the twain shall meet. There are many -- myself included -- who love the company of both animals, and have been lucky enough to have both dog and cat companions over the course of their lives. But it is also roughly ...

Spring is in the air, and a young man's heart turns to thoughts of love. I am not a young man, however, so while the rest of you are out enjoying sunshine and greenery and doing your grotesque courting rituals, I am inside basking in the warming glow of a computer screen, thinking about all the role-playing games that mig ...

It is a canard often, and falsely, leveled at Hollywood that it has no new ideas. In fact, Hollywood has innumerable new ideas; they're just all bad. If you're in the television or film business and have a really shitty idea that nobody asked for or could possibly want, you can make gobs of money, especially if your gar ...

See, here's the thing: the Spider-Man cartoon theme was, well, amazing. No sane person could argue against that. But the Captain America and Hulk cartoon themes were dumb as shit. And have they gotten any less shit-dumb in the last 40 years? No, they have not. All that has happened is that there are a lot more p ...

Earlier this week, we discussed how nostalgia for the superhero comics of '60s and '70s, on the basis that the Big Two were creating more original characters and taking more risks, is misguided not because it's false on its face, but because the original characters being created were fucking ridiculous. Today and tomorrow, ...

Today, Wednesday, March 8th, 2017, is International Women's Day. It will be marked by protests, marches, rallies, and a proposed general strike by women -- the 'Day Without A Woman' -- in reaction to the election of Donald Trump as president and the legislation, remarkably hostile to women, that he has advanced.It is a da ...

Many years ago, when 'blogs' were a thing, I wrote a series called the Geek Index, in which I examined the DC Who's Who and Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe series in order to illustrate that comic books were written for mental defectives. It did not require close examination.Nowadays, geeks -- once a pejorative ...

A new wave of Russophobia is sweeping the nation, surely the high-water point for such shenanigans since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. It's familiar; much of it echoes the anti-communist rhetoric of Ronald Reagan, the closest analogue in presidential history to Donald Trump, only this time our political leader ...